


black days and sky grey

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2012 Phan, Amazingphil - Freeform, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Based On A Panic! At The Disco Song, M/M, Phan - Freeform, Phanfiction, Sad with a Happy Ending, danisnotonfire - Freeform, phil is just really cold and alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 13:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5929624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>there's never air to breathe</i>
  <br/>
  <i>there's never in betweens</i>
  <br/>
  <i>these nightmares always hang on past the dreams</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>title and description taken from 'impossible year' by panic! at the disco</p>
            </blockquote>





	black days and sky grey

**Author's Note:**

> there were two thoughts on my mind the first time i listened to ['impossible year'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6XHLcIGESY) by panic!  
> 1\. 2009 ryden  
> 2\. 2012 phan  
> ((and then later the realisation that SPENCER but right now let's talk about my initial thoughts))  
> and naturally, having a brain constantly focused on barely developed story ideas, my immediate reaction was to open a word doc and spew some waffly angst about my favourite losers.

the way phil remembers it is a lot of fingers in hair and cold toes between the sheets and shoulder bumps at the radio station. it's an entire universe spread across bare skin and an exploding star under every brush of his fingertips. it's a hundred miles between the beating of their hearts and a thousand strings tying them chest to chest. it's the pacing of dan's footsteps at 3am and the hushed whispers dusting his pillow at 4am. it's every breath phil took, every coffee phil sipped, every bruise phil left. it's the days between summer and autumn, when it's still warm but in the way where the breeze is calming and the air is pleasant and the pumpkin lattes have just appeared on the starbucks menu and if you're lucky enough you can catch a single leaf in your outstretched palm.

but now it's just winter, when it freezes and it drizzles and the cold air makes your nose run and your ears turn red. it's last night's thin layer of snow that turned to sludge against the curb before the first snowball could be thrown. it's the shuffling of socked feet past his bedroom door, early enough that there will be no chance of them catching each other in the kitchen on the hunt for breakfast. it's the closed doors and the empty silence in every room of the apartment and the cold, cold metal of the radiator that neither of them have the effort to organise getting fixed. 

it's dan coming back from the shop without phil's favourite cereal that he never used to forget. it's phil having to go out later for the second shop of the day and leaving out the ribena dan forgot to buy himself. it's the twist in phil's gut when dan brushes past him without looking to grab a cold slice of pizza before disappearing to eat in his room. it's the ache in his head when the only noise dan makes is the pacing and muttering in the wee hours of the morning and phil knows he can't comfort it with whispers this time. the rainy weather is nothing compared to the breaking of phil's strength.

there is only one crease in the sofa now – dan’s having been long abandoned – and phil hasn’t moved from it for three days, stupidly hoping the cold seat next to him will suddenly fill with a sarcastic voice and a self-deprecating laugh. it never does.

space. they needed space. and now there is so much of it and it strangles phil every night, slaps him in the face every morning, suffocates him under blankets and cushions while he tries to surround himself with warmth to make up for the cold space dan left him in. and he hopes dan’s happy. he hopes to god dan got the space that he wanted because phil doesn’t mind suffocating as long as dan is happy.

but in the days that last forever stretching into nights that never end, when the air freezes the breaths before he can take them and the frost creates icicles on the words he’s left hanging in the air for far too long, phil wishes his chest would rise and fall with ease, the way it used to. he wishes the space didn’t have a hand around his throat, squeezing until his face turns purple. from the lack of oxygen or the frozen air, he doesn’t know. he isn’t sure it matters.

phil doesn’t remember when they started living in a freezer. he doesn’t remember when they agreed to trade their home for this refrigerated isolation. but the more he considers it, the more he realises that’s what they’ve done. they’ve chosen to live in a freezer. all that’s missing is the frozen peas. although, perhaps dan is a suitable substitute for those. the cold radiating from him stops phil’s knuckles before they hit the door that never opens, stops phil’s voice before it calls out to the heart that never answers. at least frozen peas would numb the burning pain. dan only makes sure the hurt never ceases, crushing ice under phil’s skin and through his veins until he can’t breathe all over again. and the apartment that is now a freezer doesn’t feel like home any more. it feels unwanted and lonely. staying inside is lonely.

going outside is worse. it’s worse because dan pretends. and phil – stupid, stupid phil – he believes him. for an hour, or a day, he believes it’s real. he believes the space is gone and he’s back in dan’s world. he believes it up to the point where they step across the threshold into their apartment and the rush of cold air freezes the arm reaching out to wrap around dan. he hates remembering. more than anything else, he hates remembering it went wrong. he hates remembering he cannot breathe any more. he hates remembering dan is not his.

it’s always after going outside that he spends three days staring at the wall opposite the couch. it’s always after going outside that he stops ordering takeout for dinner, stops eating all together. it’s always after going outside that he relies on the dull hunger pain nagging in his stomach to comfort him. it’s always after going outside that he doesn’t need coffee to keep him away from the nightmares because there’s no way he’d sleep anyway. not that that’s ever stopped the nightmares before. he hates everything that haunts him in his dreams but more than that he hates waking up into a world where dan’s barely-there presence hovers above his body, shrouding him in cold silence and ghostly whispers of what could have been, what _would_ have been if he hadn’t ruined it. if he hadn’t taken up too much of dan’s time, too much of his space, they’d be able to live in the days between summer and autumn forever. but phil can’t bear thinking about that because winter has already caught up to them and he doesn’t know how much longer he can hold out.

when phil passes out on the couch, his eyes rimmed with unslept nights and his breath catching on the spikes growing in his throat, he doesn’t consider that the fingers in his hair are another nightmare. maybe because he’s so tired, or because the hunger fills his brain, or maybe just because he doesn’t want to consider it. he knows how cold he’ll be when the nails stop scraping gently against his scalp, but he’ll take anything to thaw the beat of his heart for just a moment.

he let’s himself believe, the way he knows he never should, and he ignores the light pestering his closed eyelids in the hopes that he can hold onto his dream for a little longer. pins and needles squirm through the arm forced into the couch cushion but he won’t move, too scared of the fingers disappearing. he imagines denim pressed against his cheek, the back of his head almost touching the cotton t-shirt and the fingers, ever present in his unwashed hair. he can feel the warmth he’s missed for so long, the warmth that he can never find in blankets. he loses himself in it and forgets. he forgets it isn’t real and, without thinking, presses further into dan’s thigh.

the fingers don’t leave. and now there are lips against his ear and he hears the heart that never answers, calling to him for the first time in far too long. _don’t leave me alone in all this space._ and he opens his eyes so suddenly that it takes him a minute to realise the denim has gone, the cotton t-shirt has gone and the fingers, his favourite fingers, have gone.

he knows it’s still early in the evening but he’s too tired to stay awake. he’s too tired to avoid the nightmares. but it’s not until he climbs into bed that his too tired brain catches up to the rest of the world and he realises. the denim is gone, the cotton t-shirt is gone, the fingers are gone. but the warmth never left.

and despite the melted sludge outside and the radiator that won’t turn on and the fire that takes too much effort to bother lighting, phil feels warm inside like he hasn’t in a long, long time. and the warmth tingling from his stomach does more than heat the tips of his numbing fingers. it makes him happy. happy enough, even, to let his exhaustion take over.

so phil sleeps properly, for the first time in months, and he’s so tired that he doesn’t wake until after the socked feet have shuffled past, after the black jacket has disappeared from the hook next to his silver one, after the front door has opened and closed twice, after the shopping has been tucked away and everything is neat, after the phone call has been made to someone who can fix their radiator, after the door that never opens has been left ajar just slightly and the humming from inside has filled the empty silence that phil thought would never end.

and when he gets up there is a new box of his favourite cereal in the cupboard. he goes out later to buy enough purple ribena to last dan a month.


End file.
